A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit by Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia trying to force the state’s secretary of state to enforce state law with regard to signature matching on absentee ballots claiming they didn’t have standing to sue.
The three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, including Bill Clinton-appointee Charles Wilson, Barack Obama-appointee Beverly Martin and Donald Trump appointee-Robert Luck, ruled Sunday that Perdue and Loeffler could not sufficiently prove they had been injured enough by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to warrant standing.
“They alleged that the secretary is the state’s chief election officer, that he has the authority and responsibility to manage Georgia’s electoral system, and that he, along with the election board members, has the duty to promulgate rules and regulations to obtain uniformity in the practices of election officials and to ensure a fair, legal, and orderly conduction of elections,” the court wrote.
“But… the absentee ballot statute puts the duty to ‘compare the signature’ and accept or reject a ballot on the ‘registrar or clerk’—not the secretary of state.”
Incumbent Republicans Perdue and Loeffler are facing Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Jan. 5 runoffs for the state’s two U.S. Senate seats.
The case is similar to one filed last month by famed attorney Lin Wood, noted for representing wrongly accused Richard Jewel in the 1996 Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bombing, who also was turned away in his suit by a federal court which accused Raffensperger of lessening signature matching rules written by the state legislature.
Both cases noted the agreement signed by Raffensperger in March to settle a lawsuit brought by the Georgia Democratic Party that critics say allowed for unlawful ballots to be counted in the November election.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.